Wright stuff or myth that grew wings?

Wednesday marks the centenary of the first flight, but do not expect a celebration here, or anywhere else in Brazil.

As Brazilians see it, Orville and Wilbur Wright are not heroes or pioneers, but rather villains and frauds who stole credit for the invention of the aircraft from the man after whom this quiet provincial town of 46,000 is named, Alberto Santos-Dumont.

Santos-Dumont was a millionaire coffee grower's son and renowned bon vivant who became perhaps the most famous aviator of his day.

"Welcome to the land of the father of aviation," proclaims a billboard on the outskirts of town. Nearby stands a full-scale model of the 14Bis, the boxy bi-plane that Santos-Dumont twice flew before cheering throngs in Paris in 1906.

Although what Brazilian textbooks call "the Wright Brothers' alleged flight" at Kitty Hawk on December 17, 1903, took place nearly three years before, Santos-Dumont advocates say the two Americans cannot be considered the first to fly, for manifold reasons, starting with the fact that their aircraft did not take off under its own power, but used a ramp, and did not have wheels.

They also argue that because the Americans did not fly a predetermined distance before an independent panel of experts, they did not meet scientific standards of proof.

Henrique Lins de Barros, a physicist who is director of the Museum of Astronomy in Rio de Janeiro, said: "It is like a competition at the Olympics." "An athlete has to pass the test in front of judges, playing according to established rules. If he does it the night before, it doesn't count and he doesn't win the gold medal."

The US will this week reinforce its claim to be the technological superpower by reminding everyone of the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers' first powered flight.

Weather permitting, a replica of the Wright Flyer will be used in a re-enactment of the brothers' feat at Kitty Hawk Beach, North Carolina, on Thursday.

The US President, George Bush, is expected to use the occasion to make a keynote speech on US space ambitions.

Santos-Dumont himself shared and encouraged scepticism about the Wrights' achievement.

In What I Have Seen, What We Will See, an autobiography published in 1918 predicting intercontinental flights, he said: "I don't want to take anything away from the Wright Brothers, for whom I have the greatest respect," but added that "it is undeniable that they worked furtively".

Only in 1908 after his own flights, he argued, did the Wrights come out into the open and allow others to witness their work.

"What would Edison, Graham Bell and [Guglielmo] Marconi say if after presenting the electric lamp, the telephone or wireless telegraph in public, some other inventor appears with an improved version, saying that he had built them first?," Santos-Dumont asked.

After the Wright Brothers' flight at Kitty Hawk, the headline on the first story about their feat in The Dayton Daily News, their hometown newspaper, read; "Dayton boys emulate great Santos-Dumont".

At the very least, aviation historians credit Santos-Dumont with the first flight outside the US and the first public flight.